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You may have heard of the Megalodon. The large shark creature was the presumed predecessor of the great white sharks of today. The massive shark was the size of a school bus and an impressive predator.
How could a shark like that go extinct? The sheer size and force of an animal that size seems to be completely unexpected. The fossil record shows that it did in fact exist. But what wiped it out?
Scientists think that a massive supernova may be the cause of extinction for these animals.
Adrian Melott, a professor at the University of Kansas and the lead study author, said, “I’ve been doing research like this for about 15 years, and always in the past it’s been based on what we generally know about the universe–that these supernovae should have affected Earth at some time or another. This time, it’s different. We have evidence of nearby events at a specific time. We know about how far away they were, so we can actually compute how that would have affected the Earth and compare it to what we know about what happened at that time–it’s much more specific.”
Apparently the damage from a supernova would have extended hundreds of yards into the ocean, which is probably what wiped out the seemingly invincible Megalodon.
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